Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Delusional in Vermont

Just when you thought anti-gay/anti-SSM folk couldn't be more delusional, you get set on your heels. Today's example came from the on-going Vermont Senate hearings on bill to move from civil unions to full same-sex marriage beginning September.

Let us consider the cruel and clueless concepts of Stephen Cable, founder of Vermont Renewal. We can't be sure whether that really exists, by the bye. The website is empty even though the org is years old. Cable is registered as a lobbyist in the state (source of the mug). Mostly it seems though he acts like our local MassResistance. He shows up at marriage-equality rallies and legislative hearings to rattle his can of doom of the horrors that will befall Vermont if it enacts SSM.

Forget for the moment that he said the same things before the state legalized civil unions in 2000. The facts that many are helped and no one GLBT or otherwise is harmed, either there or even in that Massachusetts place.

Cable was not one of the two anti-SSM sorts who testified on the first day. One of those bored with pseudo-science, while the other has a lot of sexual fixations and a total misunderstanding of marriage.

Instead, on day two of the hearing, Cable reacted to speakers from two business group heads who favored enacting SSM. He didn't seem to like hearing that most business owners saw the shift as good for the state. Rather, he went from the groups' reported reality to his fantasy, as the Burlington Free Press paraphrased him, "...there are plenty of other business owners who oppose same-sex marriage. Some of them are afraid to say so publicly because supporters of the legislation are swift with retribution."

Then he got absurd with, "Proponents of gay marriage are very good at voting with their wallets and we are not because we’re traditionalists who don’t want to hurt anyone."

After hearing the first day specifics of what homosexual couples gained from civil unions and would gain from SSM, he glazed over. Instead of seeing that he want to hinder and harm gay and lesbian couples, he holds that he's the nice guy.

An imagined GLBT boycott of anti-SSM businesses would hurt someone, but his malicious attempts to deny marriage equality, with its legal and social benefits is okay. It must be nice to be a guy like that, doing evil and seeing himself as virtuous.